We woke up to a sunny day in the city park here in La Crosse, Kansas:

I called the police last night to confirm that we were in the correct spot and that it was legal.  I love how laid back rural America is:

We discovered that we parked next to a cluster of museums, all on the same property:

 
We first visited the Barbed Wire Museum:

Barbed wire art:

This museum is surprisingly extensive:

Each variant of barbed wire in the collection is labeled with its patent number:

This wire was used in 1892 in Bodie, California to move power from a hydroelectric plant to the town.  It was the first attempt in history to transport power from the source to a distant destination.  It was thought at the time that electricity flowed like water, and if the wires did not travel in a straight line, the electricity would “spill out”.  The project was a success, and power flowed 12 miles to town, though the perfectly straight path of the power poles was unnecessary:

This nest was built by ravens out of strands of barbed wire.  It weights over 70 pounds:

A setup like this, a modified coffee grinder and grinding wheel, was used to create the first strand of barbed wire:

A fence stretcher:

Fence posts:

The barbed wire hall of fame, which honors barbed wire collectors:

Our next stop was the Rush Country historical museum:

Our third stop was the post rock museum:

Trees were scarce in the plains states, so fence posts were made out of limestone:

Our next stop was the bank musuem, in the closed bank building moved here from Nekoma, Kansas:

The last museum here was a one-room schoolhouse, also moved here from Nekoma:
 

We continued east to Fort Larned National Historic Site:

The fort was built in the mid-1800s to protect traffic along the Santa Fe Trail from hostile Native Americans:

The visitor center was interesting:

This photo shows William Bent, one of the brothers who built Bent’s Old Fort, which we visited yesterday:

Our last stop of the day was Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve:

The preserve protects and interprets the largest remnant of tallgrass prairie in America, which once covered over 170 million acres:

The preserve also protects a historic farm.  We visited with the horse:

We continued east to overnight at Lyon Lake, which allows free lakeside camping:

See the alternating light blue line on the trip map for today’s drive.